Silly Little Traditions
by Angel Leviathan
Summary: He knew that if he deprived Jackie of seeing her daughter on her twenty first birthday he would never, ever, hear the end of it.


Title: Silly Little Traditions

Author: Angel Leviathan

Disclaimer: Doctor Who, characters, concept, etc, aren't mine.

Spoilers: Nothing specific as far as I can tell.

Notes: Written for an LJ challenge.

* * *

Rose's twenty-first birthday. 

The Doctor had known she would never pass up the opportunity for a party, nor would she let him forget that, even if they lived outside of the normal timestream, she did get older and she did have birthdays, even if he didn't as such.

Perhaps it wasn't her birthday. Maybe she wasn't even twenty-one yet, maybe she was nearly twenty-two, there really was no definite way to tell with the life they led. But when she announced to him that she had calculated that she had spent two years with him, that was enough of an excuse for a party. He knew she still attempted to keep track of the days, but whether she had really got to six hundred and thirty was irrelevant. He could take her to the actual date of her twenty-first birthday on any given day at any given moment. But she believed she was officially twenty one. So fair play to her.

That, and if he knew that if he deprived Jackie of seeing her daughter on her twenty-first birthday he would never, ever, hear the end of it.

So the Doctor took her home.

Rose had been surprisingly awake that morning. Or whatever passed for morning on the clock they ran inside the TARDIS. Usually he had to employ many plots and tricks to get her out of bed (including once literally dragging her from her room, carrying her over this shoulder, whilst she was still only in her underwear, and throwing her outside into an alien snowstorm) but it was she who had woken him that morning, unfortunately by throwing herself at his sleeping form and refusing to move.

She was still surprisingly awake now. At nine o'clock at night, down her local pub, surrounded by her friends and some of her family who had travelled to London for the occasion. The Doctor had asked Jackie what she would have done if Rose hadn't appeared on the day. She had stated that she knew he wouldn't let her down. Which was nice. And probably as great a complement as he would get from Jackie in public.

So, there she was, right in the middle of a big crowd. Not quite drunk, certainly not hammered, but certainly rather tipsy. The Doctor wasn't amongst the group. He had tried to insist he would be waiting for her when she left the pub, but she had said she wasn't going without him. He made what he hoped was polite conversation with her friends, got on quite well with a few of them, but stepped back and allowed her to have what he hoped was one normal evening. He had the rest of her life to spend with her. She could spend any day, anywhere, any when with him. The Doctor smiled when she laughed and casually watched her for most of the evening. He found he quite enjoyed pretending to be a normal bloke. The beer wasn't half bad anyway.

What amused him greatly was that they had arrived in the pub on the night a karaoke competition was being held. He had laughed at the drunken renditions of songs by some of her mates, not too loudly, just in case they decided to pounce on him and make him take part. Rose was howling with laughter and trying to bat the hands of a friend away as they sprayed her hair with glitter.

As the girl he knew as Shireen stumbled towards the stage, Rose managed to extract herself from the crowd and headed over to the bar. She grinned and parked herself beside him.

"So…we know you dance…" she started, "…do you sing?"

The Doctor's eyes widened, "No. No, no, no, no, no and…nope!"

"Oh, come on!" Rose moaned.

"Nope!"

"Doctor…"

"Not a chance!" he stated.

"Please?" she tried again, "For me? Come on, you know you want to."

"Rose…"

"For me," she repeated, "for my birthday," big brown eyes gazed up at him, silently pleading.

He lowered his voice, "You may not be twenty-one yet, young Rose!"

She continued to gaze up at him.

He was done for.

A deep, theatrical sigh escaped him, "…Oh, alright then… just this once…"

"Yeah!"

"Once! Just this once!" the Doctor held up his hands, "The once!" he prodded her.

Rose tried to nod solemnly, "Once."

So he was roped into doing karaoke, singing duet with her. He refused to sing on his own – if he was going to make a prat of himself, he was going to take her down with him. He surprised her (and ashamed himself) with the number of songs he actually knew the lyrics to, but how they ended up singing 'The Time of My Life' he didn't know.

In all honesty, he thought they sounded pretty awful, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it. And his Rose could sing. Really, properly sing. She would have been better off singing alone, he decided. He faked being unable to hold a tune for the first few lines of the song, until she glared at him and nudged him, and he decided to actually put some effort into it. Jackie would mock him forever, for a start. So he sang with her and actually had some fun doing it, though he would never admit it. He had rarely sung in his life, and whilst he could hold a tune, he felt as if he was letting her down. But from the look in her eyes, and her smile as she looked up at him, the fact that he was singing with her was enough.

Still, he was ninety-nine point nine percent certain he looked like a complete prat.

As she returned to her friends, to their applause, and he decided to hover on the outskirts of the group, the Doctor heard the few whispered comments that went between the young people on the subject of himself and Rose. Were they a couple? Were they shagging at any given minute? Hadn't her mum said that she was travelling with an older man? This Doctor guy didn't seem to be as old as her mum had described? New man? The Doctor sighed. New, new Doctor.

"I see our Rose has finally found herself someone she can trust," one of her uncles came to stand beside him, keeping his voice low.

"I like to think so," the Doctor replied.

"Good man," he clapped him on the back, "Haven't seen this side of her since she left school. Never seen her smile like that though."

At that moment, Rose caught his gaze and frowned slightly when she noticed he was gazing right at her. She smiled, winked, and looked away.

The uncle (was it John? Jack? No, John) gave him an approving nod before heading back to the bar to order another pint.

It was midnight before they found themselves wandering back to the TARDIS. Rose with a bag of various presents in one hand, a kiddies' tiara in her hair and silver glitter smeared across her face. For the most part, the Doctor had managed to escape the glitter. Before Shireen had grabbed him and sprayed it through his hair. He swore glitter fell from his hair every time he so much as twitched.

He realised she sobered up rather quickly once they were a few paces away from the pub and wondered if she had just been playing drunk for the last couple of hours. They had, after all, had some rather horrific nights of drinking lethal alien booze, enough to put any Earth brew to shame. It was really a wonder that all those alco-pops she had drunk had touched her at all.

Rose smiled up at him, "Thank you."

He grinned, "Anytime," he paused, "Literally."

She nudged him, laughing.

They made their way back to the estate mostly in silence, until he stopped her just before they reached the TARDIS.

She frowned up at him, concerned, "Doctor?"

He thrust a small box into her free hand, "Happy birthday, Rose Tyler."

Rose's mouth fell open, "I thought…I thought coming here was my present?"

He shook his head, "I'm not that clueless about your planet's silly little traditions."

She pretended to glare at him, "Quiet, you're ruining it."

The Doctor sighed, "Go on then, open it."

She set her bag of presents down on the floor, needing both hands to get the tiny box open. Her mouth fell open again as she caught sight of what was inside and it took several glances between the Doctor and the box for her to manage to get together anything coherent to say, "Oh my god…where did you get this? Wait, when did you get this?"

He shrugged and tried to hide a smile, "Here, Earth. Not any whacky alien metal there."

Rose pulled on the silver chain inside the box so she could raise what had caught her attention to the dim light of the street lamp above them, "This must've cost a fortune…"

He just smiled.

A single band of gold, a ring, hung between them on the chain.

"I know how important twenty-first's are to you people."

She stared at the ring, then focused on the chain. The ring couldn't have come with the chain, and it had been in a plain ring box. Then it hit her. There was a clear reason for the silver chain. Without it, the ring looked like a wedding band. Just like the Doctor to say something, not quite say it, and never say it all at the same instant.

"…Can I…do I…wear it on the chain or can I-"

"Wear them both, wear either, anywhere, why ever," the Doctor responded, not quite looking directly at her.

Rose smiled slightly, "Thank you…"

He suddenly beamed, "You're welcome," he rooted around in his pocket for the key to the TARDIS, fitting it into the lock and pushing the door open, "Now, come here and help me figure out where to hide this thing…" he produced a plastic, fake gold, tacky item from the other pocket of his suit jacket.

She laughed and followed him inside, "Come on. You know life wouldn't be complete without time, space and a karaoke trophy!"

**Fin**


End file.
